UN Endorses New Map That Reveals Africa’s True Size

The United Nations General Assembly has endorsed a world map that more accurately represents Africa’s true size.

The map reveals that countries like the USA, China, India, Europe, Brazil, and Australia can fit into Africa with room to spare. Togo spearheaded the campaign that led the UN to endorse the Equal Earth projection on September 4.

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Africa’s Misrepresented Geography

At a meeting at its New York headquarters, the UN General Assembly moved away from the 16th-century Mercator projection, endorsing the 2018 Equal Earth design as a more accurate alternative. A total of 164 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The United States was the only country to vote against it, with its delegate calling the measure unnecessary, while six countries abstained.

UN resolutions are not legally binding, meaning countries and institutions are not required to adopt the new projection or stop using the Mercator map. Still, the vote could influence how world maps are presented in education, government and technology.

Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator created the Mercator projection in 1569 to aid navigation. Nearly 500 years later, it remains one of the world’s most widely recognized map projections. However, it significantly distorts the relative size of landmasses, particularly as they move farther from the equator. For example, Greenland can appear roughly the same size as Africa on a Mercator map.

In reality, Africa is about 14 times bigger than the Danish territory. “You could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare,” says a petition on Change.org for the #CorrectTheMap campaign, which has more than 11,000 signatures. 

The True Map of Africa

Togo’s Successful Push for a More Accurate Map

Togo led the push for the resolution on behalf of the African Union, known as the “Correct the Map” initiative. Tom Patterson, Bernhard Jenny, and Bojan Šavrič developed the map in 2018 to provide a more accurate, proportional view of the world’s landmasses. 

The country said the resolution “recognizes and affirms that disproportionate cartographic representations, particularly those resulting from the Mercator projection, have had lasting cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic effects, contributing to a drastic reduction in the perceived size of Africa and other regions of the world in the global collective imagination”.

Ahead of the vote, Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign affairs minister, said: “This discussion is not a political discussion but a scientific discussion, because there is scientific proof, so we all have to accept the reality.”

The African Union backed the campaign in August 2025 and then asked Togo to lead efforts to adopt it. On Friday before the vote, France’s foreign minister voiced support for the resolution. “We will abandon the Mercator projection in favor of map representations, tailored to specific uses, more faithful to actual surface areas and in line with the recommendations of cartographers and scientists,” Jean-Noël Barrot said during a speech at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

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How Analysts Responded to the New Map

Some analysts welcomed the adoption of the new map. JJ Enoch, a London-based senior associate at JS Held, a firm that advises on geopolitical risk, said the Mercator projection made Africa appear smaller than it really is. He linked the campaign to African countries’ efforts to secure “greater influence in global institutions and greater control over how the continent is represented,”.

He said: “Adopting an equal-area map would provide a more accurate basis for education and public understanding, while signaling that Africa’s demographic, economic and geopolitical importance should no longer be viewed through inherited and distorted conventions.”

“Africa’s misrepresentation on world maps is not just a cartographic error – it’s a narrative issue,” Lerato Mogoatlhe from Africa No Filter, one of the groups behind the campaign to ditch the Mercator map, told the BBC.

She said it was part of efforts to stop the “world’s longest misinformation and disinformation” about Africa. For Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo, the Mercator map has downplayed the African continent’s vast resources, population and investment opportunities. “Maps are more than just guides for travelers – they shape how regions are perceived politically and economically,” he told the BBC.

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Togo’s government is planning an event in Lomé, the Togolese capital, with UNESCO, the African Union, and tech brands such as Google Maps in the first quarter of next year to map out how to implement the Equal Earth map resolution. The West African nation also announced that it would be the first country to update its geography textbooks.

Main Image: Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign affairs minister. Image Credit: robertdussey.com